


she's beauty, she's grace, she looks like your graphical user interface

by alittlelesspain



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 12:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlelesspain/pseuds/alittlelesspain
Summary: "Alex groans, downs another gulp, and thinks she should have known from that alone. Only a supervillain from Kara’s family would be an eco-terrorist, anti-capitalist hippie."Metropolis has Superman. Gotham has Batman. National City has...a supervillain. And Alex Danvers is perfectly fine with that, until the day her sister decides to fight said supervillain.





	

**_i_ **

Most superheroes start by saving a plane from crashing, don’t they? So, in retrospect, Alex thinks, they should have known something was up when Astra’s first act upon arrival in National City had been to threaten to sink a ship.

But the real story doesn’t start with the ship, or even a plane. It starts at 2am, in a 24-hour grocery store on the outskirts of National City.

\---

**_ii_ **

The lights of the store are dim, but they still hurt Alex’s eyes when she enters. The pain shooting up her right side with every step she takes isn’t helping matters, either. That’s what she gets for overdoing it in the DEO training room, after just getting out of a week-long mission.

“Cereal.” she mutters to herself, heading towards the center aisle. Just cereal, and a carton of milk, and then she can get out of here. Back to her netflix queue, and to the bottle of scotch that’s waiting for her, in the glorious isolation of her apartment.

She’s only going to have one glass, Alex reassures herself, already savoring the moment in her head. One glass to celebrate another successful DEO mission with the minimal amount of bones broken. Hank should be proud of her.

She locates the cereal aisle, and reaches out for the first boxes she recognizes, trying to ignore the lights flickering on and off above her. Annoying, but Alex frequents this store because it’s the only one within walking distance of her apartment that accommodates her hours, not because it’s the Ritz-Carlton.

Cereal box in hand, she rounds the corner to the last aisle for the milk, and groans. The lights here are not merely flickering; they’ve gone out entirely, except for one glowing faintly right at the far end. Alex grits her teeth and moves into the darkness, estimating the location of her destination from previous visits.   

She is squinting at the different cartons of milk, trying to figure out which one is her usual, when the background conversation that she’s been tuning out until then comes into focus.

“-look like you won’t miss it.” a hoarse voice is saying, and Alex turns in the direction of the voice, to see two men looming over a woman, who has a young child huddled behind her.

Alex tiptoes closer, hidden both by the darkness and by the fact that the men are angled away from her.

“A tenner isn’t going to put you out of business, lady.” the second man, in a light grey jacket, says, and he sounds impatient.

“We know your lot is loaded.” the first speaker, tall and flannel-clad adds, ‘You can afford to come all the way here, then you can afford to give us a piece of that, yeah?”

“What’s going on here?” Alex asks, and both men’s head snap towards her. The mother takes their distraction as an opportunity to move backwards and away, pulling her child with her, which is what Alex had been hoping she would do.

“Mind your business.” Grey Jacket tells Alex curtly, while Flannel takes a step towards her, faltering when she doesn’t back away as expected.

Alex resists the urge to pull out her gun and start shooting right and left, although in her current exhausted and bruised state, her brain is raring to do just that. Instead, she forces out a smile that she’s aware must look savage. “That conversation was looking a little heated. How about the both of you go for some fresh air outside?”

“Don’t feel like it, though.” Flannel grins. “Not when we’ve got fresh blood right here.” He continues advancing on Alex, his hand reaching into his pocket and flicking out a blade that glints sharp and deadly in the near-darkness. The retreating mother screams.

Alex is moving before her mind finishes calculating the odds. With her left arm, she throws the box of cereal at Grey Jacket, hearing a satisfying grunt as the edge of it hits him on the nose, and sends him stumbling backwards. At the same time, her right arm is drawing out her stunner, and aiming for Flannel.

Then, several things happen almost at once. From the edge of her vision, Alex sees a blur of black take down Grey Jacket, laying him flat on his stomach. There is a sickening crunch, and a muffled scream follows it. Meanwhile, Flannel grunts as Alex jabs at him with the stunner, but his reach is longer than hers, and she grits her teeth as his knife veers dangerously close to her abdomen. Even as she’s bracing for the impact, though, a hand comes down on his wrists, the force of the blow knocking the knife away.

Alex doesn’t look back behind her to see who had dealt the blow, taking the chance instead to knock Flannel down on his feet, and handcuff him with a standard-DEO-issue zip tie. (Not exactly allowed for use on non-hostile non-aliens, but Hank usually lets her get away with minor infractions, as long as Alex hands in some nonsense paperwork to Pam in HR.) Once she’s done, she jumps over to where Grey Jacket is lying on the ground groaning, and does the same to him.

By the time she is finished and turns around, the mother isn’t screaming anymore, but she _is_ looking at Alex in wide-eyed horror, her purchases forgotten and scattered over the floor. The boy, however, is staring beyond Alex with something like awe.

“Your bags.” Alex says, trying to pick them them up and stuff the zip ties back into her jeans pocket at the same time. As she struggles, a hand reaches over shoulder, gathers up the bags, and hands them to the mother.

The mother mumbles a thank you and hurries out of the aisle, dragging the boy along, but the boy is looking still looking backwards, eyes wide as saucers.

Alex blinks, and stares at the corner that the two had disappeared in. The exhaustion must be getting to her. Those eyes could not have had horizontal pupils. That doesn’t...humans can’t...it must have been the darkness playing tricks on her mind.

She gets up to her feet, and realizes that her savior is still there, posture ramrod straight, and is now watching her knowingly.

“They are simply a family trying to get by.” the woman says, as if she can read Alex’s thoughts. Perhaps Alex hadn’t been seeing things, after all.

“It was brave of you to step in.” the woman continues, and even shadowed, Alex notices that her eyes are startlingly green behind her glasses. She glances at the groaning duo on the floor. “Two against one...these are not honorable men.”

“You were the one that took them down.” Alex replies. “So, uh, right back at you.”

Green-Eyes keeps staring at her, though, her eyes glancing periodically towards the pocket that Alex had stuffed the zip ties into, and Alex is getting quite uncomfortable.

“I’m calling the police to come collect these two.” she says, more to break the silence than anything.

She has just finished texting the NCPD’s anonymous tip line, when the other woman finally replies.

“Your gratitude is misplaced.” Green-Eyes reaches down to pick up the cereal box that Alex had thrown, gives it a look of mild distaste, and then hands it over to Alex.

“It’s whole wheat.” Alex says, as she takes the box, and she doesn’t know why she felt the need to say that, or why it comes out sounding so defensive.

That gets her another long stare, before Green-Eyes makes a vague sound of acknowledgment and walks away, holding a cardboard box full of produce that she had, Alex notices, not dropped or even tipped during the entire fray.

“Hey.” Alex calls out, before she can think better of the idea. Later, she will excuse this momentary indulgence on her exhaustion, on the adrenaline rush following the fight. Here and now, though, Alex’s only thought is that something monumental had started, and is about to end prematurely.

Green-Eyes turns around.

“I’m Alex.” Alex offers.

The woman merely turns around again, and walks away, and Alex is left with the feeling that one glass just isn’t going to cut it tonight.

\---

**_iii_ **

Alex wakes up the next morning to a throbbing pain in her right arm, indecently bright sunlight shining in from the windows, and the radio playing some throwback pop song in the kitchen.

She groans and shuffles out, still in her pyjamas, to find Kara flipping pancakes in the kitchen, and singing along to “I Want It That Way.”

“Is it really necessary for the Backstreet Boys to be playing at maximum volume on a Saturday morning?” Alex grumbles, by way of greeting.

“It _is_ when I’m seeing my big sister for the first time after her vacation.” Kara floats across the kitchen and envelops Alex in a bearhug that is nothing less than crushing, although Alex can tell that she is carefully controlling herself. “How was Malta?”

“Nice.” Alex mutters, taking care to hide her wince when Kara releases her. “Sunny.”

(It had been Florida, actually, and the “vacation” had actually been a week long stakeout of an offworld drug cartel, and the only sun Alex had caught was when huddled beside a third story window, staking out the resort owned by one of the kingpins.)

“But surely, Cat Grant hasn’t _not_ called her beloved assistant in on this fine Saturday?” she asks Kara in turn, mock surprise coloring her voice. “Has National City run out of lattes for you to fetch for her? Have the presses stopped running?”

“She gave me the day off when I said you were coming back from vacation today.” Kara replies, glancing reproachfully at Alex. “Miss Grant can be really nice, you know.”

Alex privately thinks that pigs would fly before Cat Grant is _nice_ , but gives Kara another hug instead of saying so. The hug is half in apology, and half just to make sure that she is here, in her own apartment with her baby sister, and not still caught in the middle of that crossfire in Florida, or facing down the length of a knife at the grocery store.

“Is everything ok?” Kara asks, when Alex finally releases her. Her voice is soft, as if she senses the desperation in Alex’s grip.

Alex nods and busies herself with the coffee maker. It’s a good thing she had thought to wear her long sleeve pyjamas to bed last night. Kara would freak if she saw the pattern of bruises marking up almost the entirety of Alex’s body right now.

Right as she’s measuring in the grounds, Kara makes a muted noise of displeasure, and Alex looks up to see her glaring at the television screen.

On the screen is a sight that is by now familiar to Alex - a figure dressed in all black levitating high in the air, the posture in clear defiance against the law enforcement officers arrayed on the ground below.

Alex grins and turns the volume up. Her morning entertainment is here.

“-although environmental activists are now alleging that the tanker’s collision avoidance system was not properly maintained,” CatCo Worldwide’s early morning news anchor is saying. “And that the tanker itself was one grounding away from an oil spill, so a return to port was inevitable.”

“What did She do now?” Alex asks, one eye on the TV and one on the coffee maker. The police seem to be shooting at the black-clad figure, who swirls her obsidian cape around herself in a melodramatic fashion.

Sometimes, Alex swears that time warps around National City. It feels impossible that it was only three years ago that a metahuman had arrived at National City, and imposed on it what tabloids like to dramatize as a “reign of terror”. Alex would more accurately describe it as “occasional public displays of villainy, that dangerously toe over the line to Woodstock-level hippieness.”

To Alex, it feels like She has been an immutable part of National City’s landscape forever. Metropolis has Superman, Gotham has Batman, and National City has She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. (The sarcastic non-name courtesy of Cat Grant, whose initial attempt to dub the metahuman as Superwoman, had reportedly resulted in a terse personal visit from the dame in question herself, behind closed doors).

“She took the port hostage.” Kara’s lips purse, and she looks unusually solemn as continues. “And then threatened to sink an off-coast oil tanker if the captain didn’t return it to shore immediately.”

Alex snorts despite herself, and then raises her hands up in a conciliatory gesture when Kara throws her a scandalized glance.

“An effective negotiating tactic, if unorthodox.” she comments.

“She’s a bully!” Kara says, uncharacteristic heat in her voice. “Why doesn’t She work together with the police and the EPA? Holding an entire port hostage is just...mean!”

Alex shrugs. The thing is, Kara is brilliant, and she was born on a planet whose society seems to have been exponentially more advanced than that of Earth. All of which makes it hard for Kara to understand, and even harder for Alex to explain, that corrupt politicians bought by corporations _do_ exist, and that humans are stupid enough to vote them in, and that a stick is far more effective than a carrot, sometimes.

“Call me when She kills someone.” she says, lightly, but in her mouth she can suddenly taste bile, as the memory of last week’s mission invades her mind again. The bullets flying through the air like rain, the actual rainwater on the ground turning red with blood, the scream ringing out as one of her agents takes a bullet to her arm.

“It’s not right.” Kara mutters suddenly, breaking Alex’s reverie. Her disgruntled tone is muffled by  the fact that she’s taken a big bite out of another pancake. “Someone should do something.”

In retrospect, that alone should have tipped Alex off about the events that are soon to unfold.

Instead, between exhaustion and her preoccupation over the events of the previous week, she merely mumbles an absent-minded reply, and inhales the coffee instead.

\---

**_iv_ **

It seems the entirety of the DEO is in uproar over some bill or other introduced by the President, when Alex walks in through its doors the following day. Normally, she would ignore the commotion and head straight for her lab, but what gives Alex pause is that the screens in the command centre are blaring different news stations, all broadcasting a press conference about the proposed new bill.  

It’s not something Hank allows in the office on a regular basis, and so Alex does a 180 and heads towards the intelligence officers.

“The Alien Amnesty bill.” Vasquez says, and then explains the gist of it to her in the tone of someone explaining something to a caveman, finishing up with, “Have you not been following the news for the past months?”

“I prefer to keep out of politics.” Alex replies, which...isn’t a lie, exactly. She _does_ tend to tune that sort of thing out, mainly because it messes with her performance and motivation, now that she’s working for a government organization. It’s much easier to take orders from Hank when she doesn’t let in outside noise that would cause her to second-guess them.

On the other hand...the Alien Amnesty bill sounds like it would directly affect Kara, and it’s obvious to Alex from historical precedence that this is exactly the sort of thing that can be misused, depending on who is in charge.

Hank passes by as she’s ruminating on the new information, and she notices that his greeting nod is curter than usual, although it’s hard to tell sometimes.

“Something rotten in the state of Denmark?” Alex asks, following him, and sighs when Hank cocks his head at her. And Kara says _she’s_ not hip to popular culture.

“You’re not happy about the bill?” she tries again.

“I just know that the President has been really pushing to get itl through Congress in record time.” Hank says, “And my job is to figure out why, and what the answer means for our organization.”

She might as well have tried to get a straight answer out of a sphinx, Alex thinks, as she leaves him to his patrol, and heads towards her lab.

“Good morning, Kara.” the hologram projected on the lab table greets Alex, as she enters the lab.

Alex sets aside her bag, turns down the volume on the hologram, and opens up its source code. She could probably hack the alien code enough to program it to recognize her face and greet her by own name instead, but she wants this to be something for Kara alone, from the very beginning.

“Good morning, Alura.” she murmurs belatedly, because it seems like the polite thing to do, even if the hologram in front of her is only a CGI recreation of what Kara’s mother must have looked like, rather than the real thing.

The program projecting the hologram is something Alex had unearthed in the pod that Kara had crash-landed to Earth in, when Hank had finally allowed her access to it. It’s taken Alex months just to recreate what she thinks the language of the code must be, and even that wouldn’t have been possible without the fact that the source language seems to have been painstakingly created to imitate the structure of Earth-origin programming languages from the 70s and 80s.

The real problem, though, is in interfacing the program itself with Earth’s 21st century output devices, which the Kryptonians ould not have accounted for. It’s something that Alex is still figuring out piece by piece, and it’s a miracle that she has proceeded as far as this fuzzy, static-filled hologram.

One day, Alex tells herself, as she sets down to work on another morning of code sifting. One day, she will be able to show Kara her mother’s last - and greatest - love letter to her: a depository of all the knowledge available on Krypton, in one simple user-responsive program.

The news broadcasting from the screens buzzes behind Alex as she works, unheard and unconsidered.

\---

**_v_ **

Alex’s second encounter with her savior happens, as most interesting things do, at 2am in the morning. Alex has wandered into the produce aisle - by mistake, while searching for cheese strings - and there is Green-Eyes by a row of vegetables, regarding a rutabaga in her hand like it’s liable to cause cancer through sheer osmosis.

Alex has to stifle a smile. She would be the first to admit that she’s an instant noodles or hot pocket kind of woman herself, but even she knows that the produce in this place is subpar.

On the other hand, the sort of customer who wants fresh-off-the-farm harvest is not exactly the target demographic that this kind of store is aiming for.

“There’s a Trader Joe’s that’s about a 10 minute ride from here, you know.” Alex says, before she can stop herself.

Green-Eyes turns around slowly, as if completely unsurprised by the sudden comment.

“And how would I know that?” she asks regarding Alex with not much more warmth than she had regarded the rutabaga.

Perhaps if she had simply ignored Alex, or dismissed her with polite disinterest, Alex would have retreated. This cool disdain, however, and the way she moves closer to Alex and seems expectant, as if awaiting an acceptable answer, rankles.

And so, Alex persists, because leaving now feels like admitting defeat.

“You can find much fresher stuff, for one thing.” she says. “The traffic is awful getting there, but they’ve got a better selection.” Kara had dragged Alex there once, when Mom was visiting.

“I do not think the traffic will bother me much.” Green-Eyes replies, “But my occupation does not allow me much free time during the day, and if I am not mistaken, trader Joe closes his doors at 9pm.”

Alex laughs, but Green-Eyes only eyes her quizzically instead of laughing along.

“You’re military?” Alex asks, her mind running through the bases that she knows to be stationed near National City. Even the nearest one is a few hours drive away, but it’s the only occupation she can think of that fits with what had happened during their last encounter, and with the way that the other woman moves and holds herself.

Green-Eyes opens her mouth, and then closes it again.

“Ex.” she replies eventually. “But, I suppose I am now in what you would call the service industry.” A fleeting smiles crosses her face. “Yes, I serve, still.”

 _Shame,_ Alex thinks, and is surprised, both at the fact that she had thought that, and at the fact that she had cared enough to think that. She’s used to passing through like a ghost in just about every environment, not stopping to talk to near-strangers, or caring what they do with their lives, or bemoaning the fact that they seem suited to much more monumental things.

“You could say the same of me.” she tells Green-Eyes, and she doesn’t realize until much later how true the meaning of those words are.

\---

**_vi_ **

“Hello, Kar-”

The hologram displayed in front of her is stable, but Alex sighs as the accompanying audio fizzles out into static for the fifth time in a row.

Bending down, she checks the cables connecting to the monitor and speakers, grunting as the stretching aggravates her injured leg. Nothing’s wrong with the connection itself, of course; this new hiccup just seems to be another challenge of trying to use 21st century equipment to run software programmed by a civilization whose technology had been millennia ahead of Earth’s.

Alex changes the setup around a bit, puts in a new adapter that Hank had advised her to try, and crosses her fingers before running the program again.

“Hello, Kara.” the hologram says. The audio is still crackling in and out of words, but the image remains crisp and clear. “How may I be of service?”

For a moment, Alex’s hand slips against the keyboard.

“Fuck.” she swears, as her coffee mug tips over and the scalding liquid spills over her wrist and the table.

“Having a productive night, agent?” asks a voice behind her, and Alex rolls her eyes.

“Not feeling like much of an agent right now.” she grumbles at Hank, the lateness of the hour and her own exhaustion making her tone less deferential than usual. She wipes at the spill with her uniform’s sleeves, and feels rather than see him roll his own eyes heavenward in exasperation.

“I see you’ve got the display full operational.” Hank observes. Which is his way of asking what happened to the audio, of course.

“I’m working on it.” Alex says.

Hank makes a noncommittal sound, and Alex wonders if he thinks that she’s spending too much time on this, at the expense of her other duties.

“It could help us too.” she insists, turning around to face him. “The amount of data we could mine about alien species...we could use that.”

That only causes Hank to start frowning at the hologram.

“Director Henshaw?” Alex prods, because what’s his problem, really?

“Got a minute?” he asks Alex abruptly.

And sure, Alex is a little miffed at the curtness, but it’s also 1am, and the last cup of coffee in the entire office is lying spilled all over her keyboard, so she gets up and follows Hank out of the room without another word.  

She pauses for a minute at the doorway, though, and looks back, and finds herself frowning at the hologram too, like Hank had. It had to be the similarity to Kara’s features that had tripped her up. The sharp cheekbones, and the identical curve of jaw. That had to be it.

“Alex.” Hank prompts, and she hurries after him into a side hallway, which is dark save for a faint glow coming from a small room that Alex had always taken to be another storage room.

Until now, when Hank punches in a password that even she hadn’t been privy to - which means this room can be unlocked only to the highest level of access - and motions her to go in.

Alex steps into the room, and her breath catches.

Stationed in the middle of the room is a contraption that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an 80s sci-fi film, except Alex can tell from the intricate build of this machine, and the obvious wear marks on it, that this one is functional.

“Is that-?” she begins.

“A spaceship that an alien came to Earth in, a long time ago.” Hank says. His voice sounds far away all of a sudden, almost as if he’s relating a story. Alex doesn’t realize, until much later, how accurate that initial feeling had been.

She automatically moves towards the ship, but finds herself repelled by an invisible force field that seems to extend around the perimeter of the ship.

“That’s impossible.” she says, poking at the barrier. There isn’t the least bit heat emanating from it, so it can’t be plasma, and the setup doesn’t seems to be electromagnetic either.. “Einsteinian physics can’t...”

She trails off, because no science on earth can explain her sister either, and yet Kara exists, the impossible thing that Alex sees before breakfast every day.

“The most mundane of technology to them, might as well be magic to us.” Hank says, as if that explains anything, really.

“And we were able to capture it?” Alex asks in disbelief.

“Sheer luck.” Hank shrugs. “The DEO found it abandoned in a rainforest. Its advanced camouflage technology had allowed it to enter Earth’s atmosphere virtually undetected, but it seems the alien inside had ...perished, by the time we discovered the ship.”

“Jesus.” Alex whispers, and it seems fitting enough, because this right here, this proof of science that humanity can’t even begin to conceive, is as close to a religious experience as she thinks she’s ever experienced. She feels a sudden urge to tear up.

Alex sets that feeling aside, and turns to Hank.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, because this is one hell of a field trip to take someone on for no reason.

“Because this is what we could be up against.” Hank replies, “This is the reason why our organization exists.”

Alex thinks about it.

“Is this related to why you were so interested in the Alien Amnesty bill?” she guesses.

Hank nods. “That bill will provide us another resource, same as the program you’re working on will. We need everything we can use, to fight beings from planets that are far more advanced that we can imagine.”

Alex nods in comprehension, but something about his point doesn’t sit right with her.

“But those aliens...” she starts, the memory of a scared little boy in a grocery store invading her mind, his inhuman eyes wide with hero worship, “I mean..they aren’t same the ones we’re fighting. It’s different...they’re ...they’re _Kara_ , you know? “

She falls silent, because it’s hard to articulate the nebulous idea in her mind. “Alien punch you; you punch alien” is the only ideology that she’s ever subscribed to, and she can’t say that she appreciates being forced to expand it.

“Not all of them are like your sister, agent.” Hank answers her now, his face impassive.

“They could be.” Alex insists stubbornly, and she doesn’t know why it matters so much, because just that morning she’d had her right leg almost torn off by some alligator-lizard-creature-thing from the Andromeda cluster. And yet, it seems like a betrayal to Kara to not insist on the distinction.

“Maybe that’s why you’re the one I’m showing this to.” Hank says, which only makes Alex more confused.

“I get the feeling that things are going to get ...complicated around here.” he continues, while she tries to work out the complete 180 degrees that he just took in his argument, “If something happens to me, someone else here needs to be aware of this.”

Alex can feel herself shifting into overprotective mode.

“What do you - why do you think something’s going to happen to you?”

Hank doesn’t respond immediately, but stares at her for a long minute instead, before he claps her on the shoulder.

“You did well with the capture of the runaway prisoner today.” he says. “More reckless than I would have liked, but it got the job done.”

“You’re changing the subject.” Alex accuses him. “And I wasn’t reckless.” she adds, shifting slightly as pain shoots up her sore leg again, begging to differ.

Hank doesn’t seem to notice, as she turns off the light, steps out of the room, and motions for Alex to follow him.

“One hell of a storage closet.” she mutters, as Hank slides the door closed again after her. He gives her a look that isn’t particularly different from his normal expression, but which Alex has learned to decode as long-suffering.

“And get that leg looked at it the med bay.” he says, as he walks away. “Unless you want to be on desk duty for the next month.”

Alex gapes after him.

\---

**_vii_ **

It is Green-Eyes who initiates their next meeting. This Alex remembers clearly, because the memory of it becomes permanently carved into her brain in exultations and exclamation points.

Alex is reaching up for another cup of instant noodles from the shelf, when the bag of baby carrots is unceremoniously plopped into her shopping basket. She looks to her side in some perplexity, to see Green-Eyes standing there her hands crossed across her chest, as if prepared for an argument.

“There is something to be said for the accessibility and expeditiousness of fast meals.” she informs Alex, “But you will surely die without some vegetables in your system.”

“I doubt that’ll be the cause of my death.” Alex almost replies, but bites her tongue, because she might have just come back from a hellish assignment facing an Infernian in the Mojave Desert, and feel half-dead in the aftermath of it, but that doesn’t mean she gets to take her issues out on someone who she barely knows.

She must have hesitated too long before answering, though, because Green-Eyes shifts her posture slightly. With anyone else, it is an observation that Alex would have glossed over, but it feels monumental coming from someone who has not so much as blinked in Alex’s presence, without Alex feeling as if there were minutes of meditation behind the gesture.

“Thanks.” Alex mutters, therefore, and smiles despite herself.

It is when she is reaching up to put away the extra cup of noodles, that it happens. The sleeve of her jacket rides down as she stretches, revealing the still-healing scar from a burn that had eaten right through her uniform, and through half the top layer of skin, before another agent had aimed an extinguisher at the Infernian who had inflicted it.

Alex brings her arm down quickly, but the damage is done, for Green-Eyes is staring at her wide-eyed.

“Cooking burn.” Alex explains weakly. “I got a bit clumsy with the oil.”

Green-Eyes looks expressively at the usual assortment of instant meals in Alex’s shopping basket, and moves her gaze across Alex’s sweater-covered torso. Another quick glance down her body, and suddenly she is meeting Alex’s eyes again, her own ones blazing.

“Is clumsiness a habit of yours, then?”

Alex’s heart is beating wildly, caught somewhere between full-blown panic at the question and exultation from the intensity of the eye-contact, when a third voice interrupts them.

“The quinoa, ma’am?” the employee who had come up behind Green-Eyes says, offering her a bag. “You asked me where to find it?”

Green-Eyes turns away to reply to him, and Alex takes the moment to escape, feeling distinctly that the world has changed, in some small but important way.

\---

**_viii_ **

“In other news,” the reporter is saying, “National City has a new superhero. A young vigilante calling herself Lazer Girl has been spotted breaking up two fights and foiling a robbery downtown this week.” The reporter pauses, and looks meaningfully at the screen. “It remains to be seen what She thinks of this newcomer.”

Alex smiles as Kara lets out a sound of annoyance, switches off the TV, and turns her attention back to the pieces of toast sizzling on the frying pan. Even French Toast Sundays can’t alleviate Kara’s distaste for National City’s un-finest, it seems.

“How long until She gives this one the boot, do you think?” Alex asks idly, as she coats another toast in the egg mixture and passes it to Kara. “How many have there been this year so far...three?”

“Four.” Kara replies, and she’s frowning as she stares at the now blank television screen. “Why does she hate them so much?”

“Probably doesn’t want them infringing on her turf.” Alex shrugs, but Kara’s frown only deepens. She’s always had a soft spot for superheroes. Because of Clark, Alex guesses.

Truth be told, whatever Her motivations for keeping supers out of the city are, Alex doesn’t exactly disagree with the end goal. She has seen what having a super does to cities. Lots of cool selfies, to be sure, but the property damage alone, _christ_. She can’t even imagine what the insurance premiums in Metropolis and Gotham City must be like.

“I thought there’s only been three, so far?” she asks Kara now, counting off on her fingers. “Or did She face off against another one while I was out of town?”

Times like this reminds her uncomfortably of just how far out of sync she is with the beat of National City, in a way that Kara - for all her alien-ness - isn’t. Alex knows that it isn’t simply because she’s out of town on DEO business so often, or because her sister works for the largest media conglomerate in the state. Kara is just genuinely interested in people, in a way that Alex herself has never been.

“She threw out some guy with wings for hands, while you were at that conference last week.” Kara replies, nodding. “He was all ready to set up camp downtown, and then She came along and pointed some kind of sonic cannon at him until his flight patterns got all erratic, and then she threw him out into the harbour. Or, well, that’s what our NCPD liaison says happened, anyway.”

“A sonic cannon?” Alex is impressed despite herself. “I’d like to get my hands on that.”

“You’re way too violent for a lab rat.” Kara says, shaking her head, and Alex has to stifle a snort.

She can’t help her mind wondering at the existence of such technology in a supervillain’s hands, though. DEO has got some pretty sweet stuff in their arsenal, but the only sonic weapon she has ever heard of is the prototype that Luthor Industries had been peddling to the military a few months ago, before Lex Luthor had been dragged off to jail.

“On Krypton, they were considered too crude to be used as weapons.” Kara is saying now, and Alex has to stifle a smile at the slight inflection of superiority that enters her sister’s tone. “My aunt showed me one that she’d bought offworld during one of her deployments, though. Mom flipped when she caught us with it.”

Kara’s face grows melancholy as she reaches the end of that sentence. Alex puts down the knife and toast, and crosses over the island to catch Kara in a fierce hug. Kara hugs her back, gently and carefully as always, and Alex’s heart breaks for what her sister cannot have, for what Alex can’t possibly give her.

“Did you know She shattered the windows of Sam Bakhit’s eat-in place?” Kara mumbles when Alex releases her.

Alex blinks at the non-sequitur. “What?”

“When She was firing the sonic cannon.” Kara explains. “One of the shots went wild.”

“Not the falafel place!” Alex gasps, because she knows that this is what Kara needs right now, some lightness to lift the mood.

“Well, he did say that She sent a contractor over the next day to fix it up.” Kara concedes, steamrolling right over the sarcasm in Alex’s tone. Then she brightens up. “And he gave me a free sandwich, when he saw the writeup in the Tribune that I got Stacy from Food & Dining to do on his place.”

“A free sandwich? So that’s the price at which your favoritism goes these days.” Alex quips, and earns a gentle shove in response.

“I would have done it anyways!” Kara says indignantly. “And it’s the least I could do after what She did. And I can’t believe we keep calling Her that, like she’s Lord Voldemort or something.”

“Take it up with your boss, nerd.” Alex says, although, to be fair, Kara had still been in college when the infamous naming fiasco had gone down at CatCo.

“Says the person who memorized Order of the Phoenix front to back.” Kara retorts, in response to her taunt, and Alex can only make a face back at her sister, and subside into grumbling about how that had been on a dare.

\---

**_ix_ **

When Alex sees Green-Eyes again, she knows that the other woman has been waiting for her, has perhaps even been expecting her.

She knows this because Alex has barely passed through the turnstiles at the entrance, when her head turns automatically towards the first aisle, and there is the familiar face snapping up and looking in her direction, from the far end of the store, past rows and rows of vegetables and fruits. To far for her to see Alex clearly, too far for Alex to see her clearly, and yet the contact shakes through Alex, as surely as if they had been face-to-face, close enough to feel each other’s breaths.

Alex swallows a gulp, and wades through the rows of produce towards her. She is aware of a faint wish that she were fighting through rows of enemy combatants instead, although it might as well be the same, from how hard her heart beats, and how sweaty her palms are.

She’ll say hello. She’ll make some trite comment about the radishes that Green-Eyes is holding, or about the weather.

She’s not expecting the hand that shoots out, grasping at her own, as soon as she nears Green-Eyes . The contact is gentle, the hold so loose that Alex barely feels the fingers encircling her wrist, barely registers them thumbing back the sleeve of her shirt, so that the half-healed scar from two weeks ago is visible.

“You heal slow.” Green-Eyes tells her.

“‘Tis but a scratch.” Alex quotes, though what she’s quoting from she doesn’t know, because it’s a line that Kara had taught her. She would be more surprised that she is still able to speak, but it seems that all the DEO training about negotiating with hostiles has kicked in, though it seems ridiculous to consider the woman in front of her as the enemy, or the hand encircling Alex’s as a weapon.

“And how many scratches have been inflicted on you, since I last saw you?” Green-Eyes asks, her head tilting slightly backwards as if to taken in Alex more thoroughly. Alex feels the hair on her neck rise in response.

Green-Eyes drops her hand the next second, though, and moves away from Alex, and goes back to examining the radishes, as though there had been nothing in the world less important than that question.

She doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge Alex after that, so Alex takes it for the dismissal that it is, and walks away to finish her own shopping.

Fine. So Green-Eyes sees as couple of scars on her hand, and suddenly wants nothing to do with her.

And that’s fine, Alex thinks, throwing a packet of microwaveable pasta into her basket with perhaps a little more force than necessary. The woman has a right to choose the company she wants to keep.

And yet, even when she’s lining up at the express counter to pay for her stuff, Alex can’t help but still feel supremely unsatisfied by the encounter. Had she done something wrong? Said something?

She walks out of the store unseeingly, still engrossed in her a mental rehash of their interactions. It faintly occurs to her that she should have brought along her bike, because the weather is definitely too cold for the walk back home, especially when she’s carrying two weeks’ worth of groceries.

Alex shrugs and starts walking anyways.

She’s just passing by the short stretch of highway that leads to her apartment, when the voice calls out to her.

“Miss!”

Alex turns to see a sharply dressed guy waving sheepishly at her, with a phone in his hand that Alex knows costs more than her monthly salary.

“It’s just...my car broke down.” he begins sheepishly, “I was wondering if I could get some help.”

“Call AAA.” Alex replies briefly, continuing on her walk.

“My phone died too.” the man says, making an ‘aw-shucks’ expression with his face.

Alex draws in a deep breath.

“Do we really have to play this out?” she asks.

“It’s just a flat tire.” he insists. “I just need someone to help me with the jack.”

He’s slowly closing the distance between them as he speaks and oh, Alex has watched enough Forensic Files to know where this is likely going.

“I’m calling the AAA for you.” she says, giving him one final chance out of this, and is taking out her own phone, when the man lunges towards her.

Easy. Too easy. She sidesteps him, and it’s almost like she’s moving through molasses, because she’s slowing her reflexes down to keep up with him, sluggish as he is. She gets in one kick to his abdomen, another to his groin, before his outstretched hands reach her neck.

Of course he’s going to go straight for the choke. Alex breaks all five fingers on his right hand before they finish curling around her throat. She kicks him down to the ground as he starts screaming, and jumps on top of him. Bad form, Hank would say, _awful_ form, but the anger and terror seems to be leaking out of her with every punch she lands, and there is a terrible satisfaction in the screams that result.

Hands grip around her shoulder, just as she’s about to lay another punch on her would-be attacker, and lift her bodily off of him. Alex finds herself discarded to the side as easily as if she weighed nothing.

The interloper makes short work of the man, or what remains of him, throwing him over the shoulder of the highway into the overgrown grass, to stumble back to the car that was most certainly not broken down, and no doubt use his most-certainly-not-dead phone to call 911.

“I had it.” Alex begins in frustration, scrambling up. Her voice peters out as the figure turns to face her, and Alex registers the sleek black mask covering the face, and the black suit that she hadn’t been able to make out through the rain.

Oh no.

“Hell no.” Alex says. Not one of _them_ . _This_ she cannot handle.

“You’re angry.” the figure says, and there is consternation in the voice, muffled by the mask, but still present.

“I’m not-” Alex begins, and then stops. Not what? A victim? A damsel in distress?

Human?

She bites her tongue, stares down at the ground, and says, “I don’t need some superhero saving me.”

“I’m not.” is the reply that’s almost whispered into the wind.

The figure’s cape flares in a sudden wind, and suddenly Alex’s breath catches. Black-suited heroes are a dime-a-dozen in the world nowadays, but she has seen that cape before, on TV, when the anchors had raved about the unique honeycomb pattern of the material, and its ultra-advanced bulletproof technology.

The figure advances towards Alex. The stride is not threatening, not exactly, but Alex finds that she’s wrapping her arms around herself, and she knows it’s not from the cold alone.

“Who are you?” the figure asks, and then “Why are you following me?”

“Me?” Alex splutters, all the rage and grief from the night rising up again inside her. “I was minding my _own damn business_ until you came along and decided to play hero.”

“You’re lying.” A hand is waved down her prone figure, and Alex wants to snarl in response to the disparaging tone that accompanies it. “I know there’s something more to you than this.”

“I don’t know you mean.” she replies instead, in as even tone as she can muster, because she also wants to play this out, and see what information she can get. If the city’s most notorious supervillain seems to think that Alex has something on her, then Alex figures that it’s her duty as a DEO agent to ferret it out.

The figure is studying her though the mask, she can tell.

“And yet, you know me.”

“The whole world has seen you on TV.” Alex says, because that’s what a civilian would say, and then, because she can’t help herself. “Do you really have a sonic cannon? Can I have a look at it?”

She’s only half-serious, but somehow it seems to have been the right thing to say, because the figure retreats, giving Alex enough space to push herself up, although one leg is still smarting from her abrupt shove aside.

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“You got me. I’m FBI.” Alex replies sarcastically, because she figures an outright denial would probably not go over well.

The answer seems to satisfy and and irritate in equal measure.

“But you _have_ been following me.”

Alex rolls her eyes, because honestly, the egotism of vigilantes.

“I’m just trying to get some 3-minute ramen, get home, and put some netflix on.” she retorts, counting off on her fingers with emphasis. “I didn’t ask to have to deal with some grumpy lady at the store who doesn’t like my scars, then an asshole would-be rapist, and now _you._ ”

The figure suddenly goes death-still.

Alex waits for a couple of seconds, and when nothing else seems to be forthcoming, she starts quietly scrabbling around the ground to pick up the groceries that she had dropped, and which are now spilled over the highway shoulder. The slight rustle of plastic behind her tells her that her savior is doing the same.

“Thanks.” she mumbles, when she rises with one of the bags, and find the other one being held out to her.

She doesn’t get a response. The figure simply looks around as if uncertain, and then presses something on its wrist. There a blast of air, and then She is rising upwards.

“Wait!” Alex calls, but the figure is gone, obscured almost immediately by the falling sheets of rain.

“Why did you think I was following you?” Alex asks, to the empty night air.

\---

**_x_ **

“Suit up.” Hank says, as soon as Alex walks into the DEO the next day.

He throws a bulletproof vest at her and walks away, shouting out orders as he walks.

“Good morning to you too.” she says, following him while fighting with the vest. “What’s the species?”

“Human.” Hank says, as the squad assembles. He points to the screen behind Vasquez, at live footage of a nondescript grey building on the industrial side of town. “Suspected collaborator with a Quortese weapons-smuggling cartel. FBI is handling the actual raid, but we’re on perimeter security.”

Alex secures the vest and checks over her weapons, as Hank walks away to give more orders, and Vasquez does a quick summarization of the situation.

“Got it.” Alex nods at the end of it. She’s only been outlining this exact operation after hours with Hank for weeks now.

Something on one of Vasquez’ side monitors catches her attention, though, while she waits for the squad to assemble.

“What’s our favourite supervillain up to now?” Alex asks, motioning towards that screen, which shows the black-clad figure floating above National City’s downtown skyscrapers.

“Something about shooting one of the CEOs if he doesn’t bring his factories’ air pollutant output below NAAQS levels.” Vasquez replies absentmindedly, as she goes over evacuation procedures with the members of Alex’s squad.

“Hippie.” Alex mutters, strapping on her gun. “What kind of power source do you think she uses on her jetpacks, to get them to run that long?”

Vasquez gives her a look as if to say “not the time”, before continuing with her instructions.

Alex shrugs, and then grimaces as her memories of last night threaten to invade her mind again, as if they hadn’t been the cause of her restless sleep for all of the previous night.  

So National City’s most wanted criminal had personally showed up to help her out of a mess that she hadn’t needed help out of. So what? Maybe She had been bored. Maybe She had been on her way to some nefarious crime or other, and thought it would be fun to join in on the action.

“Ready, agent?” Hank asks, making Alex jump in the middle of her mental argument.

“Yeah.” she mutters. He keeps staring at her concernedly, though, so she pushes past him and towards her squad.

“Let’s go.”

She leads them out of the door, trying to ignore the misgivings in her heart.

\---

**_xi_ **

When Alex sees Green-Eyes next, she isn’t expecting the encounter, on account of being at the store at the eminently respectable time of 9pm. Kara has called an emergency movie night for the following day, to recuperate from the disastrous resignation of some editorial director or other from Catco, and Alex finds herself recruited into buying the snacks.

It is when Alex is contemplatively bouncing two boxes of pop tarts in her hands - Kara loves them, but Alex doesn’t remember if she prefers the strawberry or chocolate ones - that her ears catch snatches of the argument going in the next aisle.

“I’m not eating that.” a petulant voice is saying, the cadences clearly that of a teenager’s, “Broccoli is the devil’s food.”

“I believe that is a form of cake.” a familiar voice replies, “Broccoli is healthy for you, and you will need some proper nutrition to last on your journey back home.”

“My parents’ house is a 2-hour bus drive away, lady.” the first voice mutters, “I’m not crossing the freaking Atlantic. Can I have a Sprite?”

Alex grips her shopping basket firmly. She won’t do this. The last time had been disastrous enough. She will not-

“It’s you!” she blurts out, running into the next aisle, to see Green-Eyes with her right hand grasping the arm of a mutinous-looking teenage girl in a bright orange varsity jacket.  

Green-Eyes looks as surprised to see Alex, as Alex herself feels.

“My apologies, Alex.” she says. “I was preoccupied, and had not noticed you.” She sounds oddly confused by the fact, and then hesitantly points to the kid at her side, as if that were an explanation.

Alex just nods. She tries not to look at the kid. (Niece? Family friend? Daughter? Why does the thought of that last possibility hurt?) It’s hard, though, when said kid is staring avidly at her. Or rather, at the junk food in Alex’s arms.

“I had the day off.” Alex explains in turn. “I’m just getting some stuff for a movie night with my sister.”

“I see.” Green-Eyes breathes. “I am just...this is...” She points to her side again, seems to stumble, and then stops altogether.

“Her niece.” the kid fills in easily, and she is still staring at Alex, which is why only Alex sees the woman opposite her turn ghastly pale, a haunted look entering her eyes.

A lie, then. Perhaps more than just a lie, but Alex doesn’t think it’s her business to delve any deeper.

“Both a bit early today, aren’t we?” she says instead, and that gets a slight smile out of Green-Eyes, while the kid wanders off into another aisle, presumably in search of the pop she had been lobbying for.

“On the contrary,” Green-Eyes replies, smiling as if amused by her own words. “I have had quite a long day running down this young hooligan all around the city, I’m afraid.”

She subsides into silence after that, and merely glances at Alex expectantly, and Alex is struck all at once by how odd this must look, from someone else’s point of view. That she, who has never actually had a proper conversation with this woman, or even knows her name, is going around chasing her through grocery store aisles, and intruding into her family affairs.

It is this new insight that makes Alex abruptly thrust one of the boxes in her hands towards Green-Eyes.

“My sister likes these.” she says, nodding towards the retreating kid in lieu of an explanation. Green-Eyes mechanically takes the box and puts it into her cart. “They’re not exactly healthy, but I guess... once in a while...”

Alex trails off, because Green-Eyes is smiling at her, yes, but her eyes still look haunted, and the entirety of it is really messing with Alex’s concentration.

“Well, I’ll see you around.” Alex says, and flees when she doesn’t receive a reply.

\---

**_xii_ **

“So he quits in the middle of the issue,” Kara is saying, hands moving around animatedly as she speaks, “and I have to take over editing the whole thing, just so Miss Grant has time to look for an Art Director before the September issue.”

“Mm-hmm.” Alex mumbles, munching without much enthusiasm on a slice of pizza, while Kara continues to recreate the ensuing fallout at Catco from the resignation.

It isn’t that she doesn’t care. It’s just that she has hit another snag in what she had codenamed Mission Alura 2.0, and it’s kind of taken over her mind. She’s now gotten the program’s video and audio both sorted out, but a new problem has raised its head. Alex can’t figure out how the program depository’s categorization system is structured, or how it can be made accessible via voice command.

“-Anyways, the new art director is apparently flying in on Monday.” Kara finishes, pulling Alex away from the world of databases and query languages. “Although Miss Grant won’t tell us anything about him.”

“Sounds like Cat Grant.” Alex replies dryly, ignoring Kara’s frown and turning the volume up on the TV, as their program starts.

Maybe she should recruit one of the interns from the I.T department to take a look, she muses, as the opening strains of the Game of Thrones theme starts playing. On the other hand, the existence of alien programs that can interface with human technology is probably not the kind of thing that should be publicized, even within the walls of the DEO.

“-and since you don’t seem to go anywhere other than the lab, do you want to tag along with me to the release party?” Kara finishes.

Alex blinks, and runs her memory over the part of the conversation she had been tuning out.

“Come to a Catco Magazine release party, and schmooze with a bunch of bigwigs?” she asks, making a face. “I’d rather fight live alligators.” Which she had, in fact, during the stakeout in Florida, so she feels qualified to make the statement.

Kara rolls her eyes.

“Actually, I have another conference that weekend.” Alex adds, to mollify her.

“How many conferences can there possibly be there about genetic mutation in fireflies, in a year?” Kara asks, her facial expression suggesting that one might be too much.

“We can go for a movie tomorrow, if you want.” Alex says, more to distract Kara from the question than anything else.

“Um.” Kara looks nervous, and her face is glued back to the television screen as she replies, “I kind of have a ...thing...with Winn, after work.”

“A date?” Alex frowns, remembering an awkward guy with an eager face who had been sitting at the desk opposite Kara, the last time that Alex had visited Catco. “Is that even allowed?”

Kara looks appalled by the notion.

“We’re just going to his house!” she blurts out, hands windmilling. “He’s just doing me a - a favour.”

Alex raises her eyebrows. “So, no?”

Kara nods vigorously, and then shakes her head, and looks so thoroughly discombobulated by the end of it, that Alex decides to let it go. She figures it’s probably good that her sister seems to be embracing mundane things like dates and hangouts, as opposed to ...other pursuits.

“Blue is my color, right?” Kara asks abruptly, just as Alex settles back in to watch the program.

“Are you going on a date or not?” Alex demands, turning to her sister again, but Kara only avoids her eyes and stuffs another pizza into her mouth.

\---

**_xiii_ **

It is two days later, at 7am in the morning, that Alex unlocks her apartment door to find that she had left the TV on again, when rushing out of there due to an urgent page from the DEO.

“-reporting that the vigilante calling herself Lazer Girl has been driven out of town by Her.” The news anchor is saying, as Alex swears and looks around for the remote. “It is unclear how it happened, but there is no doubt that National City has, once again, been left without a hero.”

On the screen are two figures getting out of a van, the taller all in black, and the smaller one in an orange suit, as the anchor drones on about some bus line or other. Something about the tableau catches her attention, but Alex is too exhausted to care. She punches the power button, grateful for the blessed silence that follows.  

It’s exactly what she needs, after 36 hours of barking out orders into her headset and subduing a group of aliens hellbent on ripping the metal piping out of the city’s subway system. (Apparently the particular alloy used had resembled a food of choice on their home planet? Their version of pizza with the frills, as Vasquez had eloquently put it.)

One agent with a limb torn off, another concussed. Alex knows that the new bruises marring her body are trivial compared to that.

She closes her eyes, half-dead, too worn out even to reach for the alcohol.

\---

**_xiv_ **

The next week, the spaceship appears above National City.

It happens on one of Alex’s rare days off. She’s taken herself to the one cafe in the city that isn’t frequented by hipsters with macbooks, and settled herself down with a latte and a light book on gene-environment interactions.

She’s too immersed in the book to notice the sudden hush that falls over the cafe, as everyone's attention turns toward the TV. She does notice, though, when people start stampeding for the door, one of them almost bowling her over.

Alex instinctively goes for her gun, and then looks up towards the television screen that the few remaining patrons are looking transfixed at.

She swears. It seems appropriate, looking at the video of the spaceship - it most certainly is a spaceship, Alex has no doubt about that - hovering above the skyscrapers in National City’s downtown core.

Alex dials the DEO while watching the screen flip between images of people fleeing the city, and military copters flying towards it. The next scene makes her almost drop her phone, though, because it’s a closeup of the ship, some meters below which two figures seem to be floating. One is black-clad and familiar, and seems to be holding on to a pod of some sort. The other makes Alex’s blood run cold.  

The video is grainy, but she can just about make out the figure in blue and red, a cape flying behind it, like Superman. Except it isn’t Superman.

“Fuck.” Alex says out loud, because there’s only one person it could be, of course.

“Police are rushing to the scene-” the anchor continues, but Alex is already standing up, almost overturning the table in her hurry.

She runs out of the cafe without - she realizes later - even paying for the coffee, and reaches her bike at a dead run.

She’s already flying down the highway, when her phone buzzes. Alex flicks it on speaker before returning her attention to the road. Not that there’s any traffic, because everyone seems to be fleeing in the other direction.

“Danvers.”

“Agent Danvers, return to the DEO, now!” Hank sounds angrier than Alex has ever heard him.

“Negative, director.” she replies, raising her voice to be over the wind and the roar of the bike.

“You do not realize what you are up against, Alex. She isn’t what we thought she was.”

“She’s my sister!” Alex yells, almost crashing against a barrier, as she tries to steer the bike and speak into the phone at the same time.

“As your superior officer, I _order_ -”

“My sister comes first.” Alex says, and ends the call.

She reaches the city’s downtown core without further collisions, and follows the sound of police sirens, to the the intersection where the ship seems to be hovering over.

Alex dismounts, flashes her fake FBI ID at the police, and looks around, mind racing through her options. She could probably climb up the side of one of the buildings, but she’s willing to bet there’s a fire escape stairway leading up to the top, in at least one of them. She runs into the tallest of the buildings, finding it empty, and takes the stairs at a dead run.  

Twenty two flights of stairs later, Alex emerges out of the fire escape, gasping for breath. The first thing she sees is the blinding blue sky, against which hero and villain float, one in red and blue, one in black, locked in an unshakeable detente.

The next thing Alex sees is that she’s not alone on the roof. The place is crawling with military officers firing up at the ship, and six of their helicopters are circling in the sky. Alex vaguely recognizes the officer who seems to be in charge. He had come to the DEO a few months ago, to speak with Hank: General Lane, a man who would as soon shoot an alien as look at them.

Alex turns with renewed terror towards the sky, where Kara seems to now be shouting at her attacker, unseeing and unheeding of the gunfire all around her.

“All this time I thought you were dead!” Kara is screaming, “And you were here, terrorizing people instead! How could you?”

Whatever the other figure replies is so quiet that it’s lost to the winds, but Alex is more focused on trying to get her sister out of there.

“Kara!” she shouts, stumbling as shrapnel from the gunfire around her make contact with her body, and strong winds threaten to buffet her off the roof. She can see General Lane shouting something and walking towards her, but all she can focus on is her sister, who is in danger, whom Alex had _failed_ to protect.

“Alex!” Kara spots her, and a look of terror comes over her face, as if _Alex_ is the one that needs protecting. “You shouldn’t be here!”

“What are you doing?” Alex shouts back. She braces herself against the building edge, and beckons at Kara to come towards her. Some strange instinctive belief propels the motion; that the closer Kara is, the better Alex could protect her, could shelter her, could shield her from everything the world wants to throw at her.

Kara floats down to land on the balcony, but Alex is distracted by the fact that the supervillain follows suit, landing and striding towards them purposefully. The pod that she had been holding floats peacefully in the air behind her.

Alex’s hand moves toward her gun. Kara gasps at the sight of it, but it only results in a fit of laughter from the other woman.

“That will not work on me, Alex.” she says, removing her mask, and Alex realizes several things at once, although they are all impossible.

 _Astra._ Astra, who was Kara’s aunt. Astra, who was supposed to have died with Krypton. Astra, who came late at night to 24-hour grocery stores and heckled Alex about her instant meals. Astra, who was a supervillain, but had saved Alex’s life twice now.

“That’s... impossible.” Alex stammers, and yet, the impossible is staring at her with familiar green eyes, half-amused and half-condescending.

“Stay away from my sister!” Kara says, before Alex can say anything further, and Alex can see that she’s taken Astra’s words as a threat.

“Kara-”, Alex begins, trying to head off the storm, but General Lane has reached them them, half-a-dozen armed men following him, and Alex doesn’t like the set of his face.

She tries to engage him first, but he walks past her as if she doesn’t exist, and heads straight for Astra.

“It’s over, general.” he says, puffing his chest up like a cardinal as he stares her down. “You’ve had us fooled for a long time, but I know what you are now, and I’m here to take you down.”

“You and whose army?” Astra asks, and Alex wonders if the penchant for bad puns with terrible timing must be genetic. “Do you really think you can hurt me?”

“You’d be surprised.” Lane says. He make a hand movement, and the men behind him hoist their guns. Alex clocks the flash of green that’s glaring through the barrel of one of them.

“No!” she blurts, and Lane’s attention turns to her.

“Who are you?” He demands. His eyes moves down her civilian uniform with utter dismissal, but he stops looking amused when spots her holster, with her gun still strapped on. Alex knows he’ll recognize it; it’s a custom build, only used by federal agents.

“Agent Danvers, DEO.” she replies, and watches recognition flare in his eyes. Her exhausted brain is scrambling for any plausible reason to stop what she knows is about to happen. _Not kryptonite. Not here, not with Kara watching._ “Stand down, general. Criminal or not, she deserves a fair trial.”

Lane looks almost murderous as she speaks. “I’ve heard you lot go soft on off-worlders, but this is a disgrace. Look at what she almost did.” He sweeps his hand at the sky.

“I was trying to bring them food and supplies!” Astra interjects, glaring at Lane, “They have come from a long away. They are starving!”

Lane seems ready to argue some more, but his mouth seems to close shut as she spots something behind Alex.

Alex follows his stare, and exhales in relief to see Hank striding towards them, flanked by a squad of DEO agents.

“Trouble certainly seems to follow you, Agent.” he comments, as he reaches Alex.

Without waiting for her reply, he nods at the DEO agents, who silently position themselves in front of Lane’s men, forming a human shield between the kryptonite guns and the Kryptonians.

Only then does Hank turn to Lane.

“Trying to take over my job?” he asks, as lightly as if they were discussing a ball game at a bar. “Apprehending alien hostiles is the DEO’s mandate, general.”

Lane recovers fast.

“My men were handling it.” he says, and Alex wants to snort at how sulky he sounds. _Men._

Hank remains impassive, though.

“DEO has authority in this, general.” he reiterates. “From military man to another, let me do my job.”

Astra only looks mildly amused at the showdown, although Alex is pretty sure that she’s at least a little aware of what kryptonite can do to her. Hell, it must already be affecting her, just like it seems to be affecting Kara.

For a moment, as she stands there unnoticed, Alex feels sheer fury wash through her own body, and she wants to rush at Lane, wants to strike him down where he stands.

“Now that _that_ is settled,” Astra begins, interrupting both the impasses and Alex’s own personal war. “If you will excuse me, I have an urgent delivery to attend to.” She points at the supply pod.

Hank shakes his head.

“If I am not mistaken, that pod is a Kryptonian model, in which case my agents know how to fly it. The DEO will handle the delivery of the food and supplies.”

Astra pauses a fraction of a second at most, before she continues hoisting the pod, ignoring both Hank and the kryptonite guns pointed at her.

“Why can’t you work with them?” Kara cries out, and Alex knows that her tone is only half anger. The other half is terror, Alex can see, on Astra’s behalf.

“Because they do not care, niece!” Astra replies, her tone suddenly explosive. “They would have let them starve, if they could. Look at what they’ve done to us, even now.” She gestures at her own body, and Alex notes with another stab of guilt that her face seems to be paler than usual, and her hands seem to shaking slightly, as they hoist up the pod.

“Mother always said you had no faith in people.” Kara replies bitterly.

Astra recoils as if struck, the pod almost slipping out of her hands as she stumbles.

“This isn’t a negotiation.” Hank interrupts sharply. “These are our terms, General Astra. Take them or leave them.”

Alex notices Astra’s eyes flicker from the kryptonite guns to her niece, and then back to the guns again. After what seems like hours, Astra nods, and releases the pod, placing it as effortlessly on the ground as if it were an empty cardboard box.

The DEO agents move towards it, towards her, with almost reverent slowness. Hank gives the orders for launch, and General Lane watches DEO agents ascend with the pod with something close to outright hatred in his eyes, which unsettles Alex.

Just as she’s resolving to do everything in her power to keep him away from Kara, Lane turns back to them, eyes focusing on Astra again, expression unchanged.

“General Astra.” he says, breathing deeply, “You are still under arrest.”

Alex sees Kara move towards Astra as if instinctively, and then stop, looking agonized, while Lane rattles off a list of crimes that Astra is supposedly responsible for.

Perhaps she does it for Kara. That’s what Alex tells herself, when she steps in between the two generals, bringing Lane up short in the middle of his rant.

“Step aside, agent.” he says. “This woman is a wanted criminal in 13 states.”

Alex licks her lips. “That’s when everyone thought she was a metahuman. She’s an alien. The DEO has rights to her.”

“You have no-” Astra begins, and Alex turns to her with a look of frustration because, really?

Astra shuts up mid-sentence, though she doesn’t look very happy about it.

“You’re protecting a woman who has threatened the lives of millions.” General Lane says, when Alex turns back to him. “Is this what we fund the DEO for?”

“We’re taking her into _custody_.” Alex retorts, and, blessedly, Astra has nothing to add to that.

Lane still looks mutinous. Alex turns to Hank, hoping against hope for support.

“Agent Danvers is right.” he says firmly. “Alien hostiles are the DEO’s jurisdiction. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you take it up with the President, general.”

Lane gives in ungraciously, but he gives in nevertheless. Alex can see him stalking around the area, as she assigns DEO agents to the cordon off the site, while Hank is preoccupied with supervising the handover of the the supply pod.

Only when the area is secured, and Hank himself gives the okay signal, does she give herself permission to run back to where Astra and Kara stand, not fighting anymore, but not speaking either. Astra’s face looks supremely unconcerned, but her eyes speak volumes. Kara, on the other hand, looks transparently ready to cry.

“They issuing guns to lab rats now, sis?” Kara asks, pointing to the weapon holstered at Alex’s hip, and that’s when Alex knows she’s in trouble, because Kara only gets sarcastic when she’s really, _really,_ mad.

Alex pushes back, because that’s better than feeling guilty.

“What were you thinking?” she asks in turn. “Flying up there? You have no idea what the military could have done to you!”

“Me?” Kara looks offended, of all things. “I’m the bulletproof one here. _You’re_ the one who’s been playing Jane Bond all this time, when I thought you were holed up in some research lab somewhere!”

“I had training.” Alex insists. “You can’t just put on a cape and decide that you’re going to play vigilante.”

“Clark wears that same cape, and I don’t see anyone complaining about _his_ lack of credentials!” Kara insists, a mulish look settling over her features, “Is it because I’m young? Or maybe because I’m a g-”

“Because you’re my sister!” Alex hisses, not caring who hears, “That’s why it’s different!”

Astra laughs then, half in understanding, and half-mocking, and the sound of it breaks the impasse between Alex and Kara.

It is Alex that Astra faces, though, as both Kara and Alex turn to look at her, and Alex doesn’t know how she missed it, now that Astra’s hair is flying free and that white streak that Kara had told Alex about once is fully visible. Here, in plain daylight, there’s an uncanny resemblance between Astra and the hologram, which Astra’s tightly-made bun, glasses, and casual outfits at the store had previously obscured.

“I knew there was more to you.” Astra says now, to Alex, which elicits another sharp intake of breath from Kara.

“You knew?” Kara turns to Alex, betrayal and hurt and anger warring in her eyes, and Alex involuntarily takes a step backwards.

“Kara, no-”

“What else have you been keeping from me?” Kara asks, and then, in a broken voice, “How long have you been lying to me?”

Alex recoils as if struck, and Kara might as well have, and it would have been kinder.

“Kara, you have to believe me, I didn’t know who she was.” she says, full aware that she has given up any right to have Kara believe in her.

She watches Kara shake her head, watches her blink away tears, and knows she deserves it when Kara lifts into the air, and flies off without replying.

\---

**_xv_ **

Every atom of Alex’s being is screaming to run after Kara, but her training keeps her rooted to the spot. This is what she had become an agent for, isn’t it? All that training, all those missions, preparing her for the one moment when choosing her job seems like the hardest thing in the world to do.

“Agent Danvers.” Hank states from her side.

He doesn’t put any particular emphasis on her title, and he says nothing further; he doesn’t need to. Alex mutely takes the clipboard he’s holding out, and runs over the list of cleanup procedures that she needs to supervise.

She can hear Hank arguing in the background with the military, as she runs over the list. Alex knows that it’s posturing, really; Hank is buying the DEO enough time to get themselves in position while while General Lane is distracted by Hank’s threat to his authority.

By the time Alex returns to Hank’s side, the spaceship is still hovering above them, and the only thing that seems to have been accomplished is that General Lane has agreed to return the copters to his military base.

“What now?” Alex murmurs to Hank, hand hovering over the clipboard.

“The DEO sets up constant monitoring until we get the go-ahead of how to proceed from Pentagon.” Hank says, but his eyes look troubled as he stares up at the floating ship.

General Lane doesn’t like that of course. General Lane doesn’t like many things, Alex is coming to find out, on account of being loudly reminded of them every five minutes by the man himself. This time, he doesn’t like being told to stand down, and he likes it even less coming the from the director of a federal organization that Lane probably loathed from Day One.

“It seems you think you’re the one in charge here, director.” he says, squinting up at Hank, and Alex wants to roll her eyes because, really? Middle-school scare tactics from a decorated general?

“The military has been issued stand down orders from the President herself.” Hank says. Alex hasn’t often seen him try to intimidate someone physically, but he _towers_ over the general now, “The DEO will see to it that her orders are followed to the letter.”

Lane glances at the armed men flanking him, and Alex moves in front of Hank instinctively, hand twitching for her own gun.

Hank simply makes an irritated noise, and motions Alex out of the way. “Stand down, Agent Danvers.”

He nods at the troopers behind the general, as if expecting the same from them. They lower their weapons, although Alex suspects it’s more due to the implied threat of the President’s displeasure, than due to Hank’s authority.

“It’s a waiting game now.” Hank says, his accompanying nod a clear dismissal, which the General Lane grudgingly obeys.

It’s then that Alex realizes that Astra is still standing there. Alex had felt more than seen her skulking around the edges of Hank and Lane’s conversation, but now she looks at Astra and Astra looks at her, and Alex is suddenly at a loss. She’s going to have to arrest Kara’s aunt. Kara’s last family, whom she had always spoken of with utmost adoration.

Astra is impassive as Hank positions DEO agents around her, Alex included, but the facade drops when Hank gets out a pair of lead handcuffs.

“No.” Astra says and her voice is as implacable as mountains.

Miraculously, Hank lets it go, although Alex can see General Lane glaring at them in the distance. Before Lane can walk over to object, Astra is already following calmly by Alex’s side, into a DEO van.

Alex watches as Astra gets into the van, sees her enter the leaded cell installed without protest, and then turns to Hank, wondering what he’s thinking, or how they hell they’re going to untangle this mess.

“Step by step.” Hank says, as if to himself. “Day by day, agent.”

Alex is still trying to parse that one when Hank turns to her. “My congratulations on how you defused the situation between Lane and the Kryptonians.”

Alex takes a deep breath, and realizes when she just stands there, unwilling to exhale, that she’s out. Empty. Done.

“Keep them.” she mutters, shoving the clipboard back at Hank. “I need to go find Kara.”

\---

**_xvi_ **

It’s easier said than done, unfortunately. Alex goes to every one of Kara’s usual hangouts with no luck. Even Catco turns her away with a curt reply that Kara has clocked out for the day.

Alex is pacing in frustration in the city square, racking her brains about where to look next, when the idea comes to her.

“Kara.” she begins, and then louder, “Kara, I know you can hear me, wherever you are.”

She pauses, and wonders how she must look, standing there in the middle of the square, murmuring to herself.

“I know you don’t want to listen to me right now, and I know I’ve lied to you about so many things, but I swear I had no idea about Astra.”

Alex thinks back to all the sleepless nights, when Kara would recount memories of Krypton while Alex listened, entranced by tales of an alien world that she would never have the chance to see. She remembers how prominently Astra had featured in so many of them; of how Astra’s love for Kara had shown in every story Kara related of her.

“I’ve been so selfish about wanting you to keep your power hidden, but I would never have kept you from seeing your aunt. Please believe me.”

The last words come out as a sob, and Alex scrubs at her eyes before the tears can fall.

“I’ve done so many wrong things, thinking I was protecting you, when I should have been supporting you instead, and I can only say that I’m sorry, and I love you, and I will do better.”

She isn’t sure what she’s hoping for by saying this. For her sister to swoop down from the sky, maybe. For Kara to embrace her, and tell her she’s forgiven, that she’d meant it for the best, it’s okay.

The square remains empty, though, and Alex knows that some hurts don’t go away so quickly.

“I love you, Kara.” she whispers again into the air, and hopes, prays, that her sister is listening.

\---

**_xvii_ **

Alex doesn’t know what she expected to find when she turns the key to her apartment, but she isn’t particularly surprised by the figure sitting at her kitchen table, a glass from Alex’s kitchen in front of her, and a bottle of something that flames seem to be coming out of.

“Most people use the door.” Alex says lightly, as she sets her bag down on the table, and crosses over to the open window to close it.

When no reply is forthcoming, Alex exhales, seats herself in the adjacent stool, and extends a hand towards the bottle on the table.

Strong fingers wrap around her wrist before she can pour herself a glass, though.

“Of course you are the one human that would try to drink from a bottle that is literally on fire, but Stragian whisky could knock a Kryptonian child into deep slumber for two of your Earth days. I would not advise an Earthling to try it.”

The fingers around her wrist let go, and Alex sets the bottle back on the table with a soft thunk.  

“So you _are_ Her.” she sighs. “And _her._ ”

Astra gives one nod in answer to both statements. The last part of Alex that had been clinging to some formless hope uncoils, and limps away.

“Hank let you go?”

“He did not try to stop me.” Astra replies, which isn’t exactly a yes, Alex notices.

“Why didn’t you find us...her...Kara before?” she asks. It’s not the most pressing question on her mind, truth be told, but she asks it because she knows it to be the one that’s tearing Kara apart.

“How could I know?” Astra’s answer is barely audible, whispered more to herself than to Alex. “Arrested for treason, banished to float in a timeless prison for eternity, only to be pulled to some primitive planet by unknown forces? How could I know that some part of my world other than Kal-El had survived? That my own flesh and blood had survived?”

Alex looks down, tracing lines on the wooden table with her finger.

“Clark-” she begins.

“Kal-El never knew.” Astra interrupts. “He is the reason I went to such pains to disguise my abilities. At that time, my only thought was to build a new life for myself. To serve a new world, to atone for my failure to save Krypton. I never imagined-”

She stops again, and Alex wonders if this will always be a part of their conversations, this silence that falls whenever one of them touches on emotions too raw to disclose.

“Never imagined what?” she prompts softly, because she can’t accept that, not anymore. Because she is Kara’s sister, and Astra is Kara’s aunt, and if all three of them are going to move forward from this, the half-truths need to stop.

“Do you know how many suns I have stared up at since I turned my back on my family, knowing I would never get to see them again?” Astra stares upwards as she asks the question, as though she can see through the roof and past the stories of apartments, to the stars above. And of course, Alex is reminded with a start, she can.

“And here, under Earth’s yellow sun, I find her again.”

“You were meant to.” Alex whispers, one faithless being to another.

“And if she does not see that?” Astra asks.

Alex hears the unsaid words behind the question. _What if I lose my family again, so soon after finding it?_

“She’ll come around.” she replies. “She’s Kara.”

Astra smiles.

“You sound like her.” she says, and then. “You sound like me, when I used to talk about her.”

“I guess we both learned from the best.” Alex replies.

“Are you truly what you claimed you were to her, then?” Astra asks, turning to face her. Alex wonders if Astra, too, had overheard what Alex had said to Kara, earlier that day in the square.

“I’m her sister.” Alex says, and she hates the slight defensiveness in her tone, but damn if she’s going to give an inch on that answer.

Astra’s eyes only soften as she takes Alex in, though, and she smiles, which is a definite shock to Alex’s system.

“You protected her.” Astra says. Again, the unspoken words lurk behind. _When I was not able to._

 _But what about now that you_ are _here?_ Alex wants to ask, but bites her tongue, because she knows it’s not her place, and this isn’t the right moment.

“Always.” she replies instead; a word that comes easily to her lips where Kara is concerned.

Astra stands up and Alex follows suit, so that they face each other, human to alien, soldier to soldier, mirrors of shattered hopes and dreams, although Alex is aware that Astra’s losses run far deeper than she can fathom.

Astra’s fingers ghost over the raised scar on Alex’s cheek, where the stray shrapnel from the gunfire had struck it earlier that morning.

“Was I cause of this?” she asks, brow furrowed, and suddenly Alex wants to cry a little, because how much worse had Astra seen, on all those planets whose suns she had stared up at, and why does she care about a simple graze on Alex’s cheek?

“Go talk to Kara.” she tells Astra, gritting her teeth.

Astra nods, and Alex blinks, and when her eyes open again, she is standing in an empty apartment.

\---

**_xviii_ **

A page from Hank wakes Alex early the next morning, barely five hours after Astra had left, five hours after Alex had laid down to what would have been her first real sleep in more than a week.

Morning traffic is always hell on the highways, and she knows it'll be even worse with everyone returning to the city after the evacuation, so Alex eschews the bike in favor of a dead run to the DEO, and arrives to find the previous night’s shift working overtime, all of them grouped around a cluster of screens in the command room.

“What’s going on?” she asks Vasquez, breathless from the exertion. Vasquez simply points at her screen, which it still monitoring the status of the spaceship.

Alex looks. It takes her a few minutes, but when she’s sure of what she’s seeing, she draws a sharp breath. The ship keeps wobbling at intervals, and it drifts a little downward every time it wobbles.

“We’re not allowed to officially say this yet.” Vasquez murmurs, for Alex’s ears alone. “But we think its anti-gravity mechanism is on the fritz.”

“From General Lane’s assault on the ship, no doubt.” Hank says, and Alex realizes he’s been hovering behind them the whole time. His normally stoic face seems to be losing out to frustration over the events of the day.

“General Lane-” Alex begins, but Hank is already shaking his head.

“He doesn’t know yet, but it’s only a matter of time, seeing as I’ve alerted the Pentagon.” Hank looks fleetingly around the DEO, as if he’s committing the place to memory. “I would prefer to have this matter resolved before he shows up, and decides that bombing the ship again is the way to go.”

“If he doesn’t decide to bomb _us_ first.” Vasquez mutters, and is quelled by a disapproving look from Hank.

Alex looks over Vasquez’s terminal, which shows details of an evacuation team heading towards the projected area of impact, if the anti-gravity failsafes give way entirely and the ship plummets. In another screen, she can see that the media is already gathered around the area as well. The news went on, it seemed, even if the world was about to end.

“I should be there.” she says, turning back to Hank. “I should be the one leading that team.”

“I’ll need you here as deputy, in case of an emergency.” Hank replies curtly, and his tone is final in a way she’s never heard from him.

Alex swallows the obvious question down, and sits at a free terminal to scan the mechanics of the ship, hoping against hope for a miracle.

A few minutes later, having gotten nowhere, she brings a fist softly against the table in frustration.

“This would be a lot easier if the ship captain would let us get past whatever forcefield they’ve put around the ship.”

“I wonder if all that gunfire made them a bit shy.” Vasquez murmurs from her terminal.

“I _know_ that.” Alex says, just as another voice - a familiar one - speaks over her.

“You need help, director.”

Alex turns at the same time as Hank, to see Astra striding towards them, eyes ablaze with fury despite the calculated nonchalance that had been in her tone.

“Astra.” Alex breathes, and Astra’s step falters for a second, and the anger in her eyes dims. Alex realizes that this is the first time she has spoken the other woman’s name; the first time she’s allowed herself to accept this new reality out loud.

The anger is back in full force, though, as Astra turns to Hank.

“All this talk about me endangering the city,” she spits out, “And look what your army has done.”

“You know very well that General Lane was in charge of the assault on the ship.” Hank replies, his voice even.

“The would-be torturer.” Astra sneers. “So this is the cream of your world’s military.”

“Astra.” Alex interrupts, because time to assign blame isn’t something they have right now. Astra seems to freeze momentarily again. “Will you help us? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I think I am the only one here who can, am I not?” Astra asks, and she is looking at Alex challengingly, as if expecting her to contest the statement.

Alex turns to Hank in mute appeal.

“She’s not authorized DEO personnel.” Hank says, but there’s no conviction in his voice.

“The better for you.” Astra argues. “If this...Lane, decides to prosecute us for this action, you can pin the blame on me.”

“No!” Alex exclaims, and when Astra turns towards her, “ _I’m_ the reason you found out about the DEO. I’ll shoulder the fallout.”

“You do like taking responsibility, don’t you?” Astra asks, and her tone isn’t mocking, but there’s notes of reprimand in it that make Alex’s heart-rate pick up.

“That’s not-” she begins, but Astra takes off before she’s finished the sentence.

\---

**_xix_ **

A collective intake of breath can be heard in the DEO’s command room, when Astra first makes contact with the ship.

“God.” someone breathes, and there are murmurs of assent, and Alex kind of wants to join in herself. She’d seen videos of Superman on the news, of course, with planes and helicopters, but it’s something else witnessing it live, and with a _spaceship_.

She wants to be out in the field, to be part of the team that’s helping with the evacuation of the impact site. Wants to be next to Astra, who holds up a massive spaceship with spindly arms, and who had cared, inexplicably, about why Alex’s face was scarred.

Instead Alex is stuck here, watching Astra struggle, and knowing that if Astra doesn’t push at the right angle, with exactly the right pressure, the whole ship can come crashing down at maximum velocity, taking her with it.

Taking Kara’s aunt with it, taking away her last tie to a lost world.

“She needs help.” The words are out of Alex’s mouth before she realizes it, but it’s obvious from the way the ship keeps teetering above Astra, even though she’s slowed its descent considerably.

“Superman is off-planet.” one of the intel officers says, making a small gesture of helplessness as she speaks.

Alex turns to Hank, and finds him looking back at her, as if he knows the struggle in her heart.

“I’m needed on the field.” he declares abruptly. He turns and faces the stunned room. “Agent Danvers will be acting director until I return, and you will take your orders from her.”

“Sir-” Alex begins, but Hank is already striding out of the room, and Alex can only gape at his retreating figure, before turning back to the multiple screens in front of her.

This is the worst part of her job - putting things into motion and then _waiting_ for them to play out - and she feels the stress of it now more keenly that she ever has before.

“The ship’s tilting is accelerating.” Vasquez murmurs. Not to point out the obvious, Alex knows, but to prompt her into doing something.

“Astra,” Alex speaks into her headset. Later, she will rationalize the worry in her voice as concern for Kara’s sake. “It’s too heavy. You’ll have to -”

She stops, unable to finish the sentence. If Astra lets go, and the ship falls, the DEO might be able to mitigate the impact, but some casualties are all but guaranteed. If she guides the ship away to a crash landing, ditto.

“And leave all these people to fall?” Astra retorts, as if she had read Alex’s mind. “Think of a better idea, agent.”  Even strained with the effort of exertion, her voice is commanding, and Alex can believe Kara’s stories now; can believe that this woman had indeed led thousands to war and peace, defeat and glory, death and salvation.

She doesn’t want to entertain the thought that Astra will fail, because Astra _cannot_ fail, Kara cannot lose her aunt _again._

And yet, Alex knows, it’s her job to prepare for that eventuality

“Tsung?” she calls out, pushing some buttons on her headset, and hears him reply. “How is the evacuation of the city going?”

“We’ve cleared out the projected area of impact.” he reports back, and she can hear his team shouting orders in the background. “There’s still people milling around the perimeter, but the evac team is collecting them as we speak.”

“Agent Vasquez is sending in a team to help set up a containment field around the area.” Alex informs him, at a hand signal from Vasquez. “They’ll be in contact with you shortly.”

She switches off the comm for a moment, hypnotized by the teetering movements of the ship on the screen, as it sways from side to side, with Astra as the fulcrum. It’s slow and inexorable, and torturous to watch.

“You can’t do this alone, Astra.” Alex grits out.

There is silence, punctuated by shallow gasps from Astra, and then a new voice speaks in Alex’s ear. “She won’t have to.”

“Kara.” Alex whispers, and it feels like the closest thing she’s ever uttered to a prayer.

She faintly hears Astra echo the name in her earpiece, with equal reverence and love, and then Alex sees a figure in blue and red blur into view on the screen in front of her. Sees it join Astra’s black-clad figure in the center, and raise its hand towards the giant bulk. With agonizing slowness, the ship begins to the right itself, until it is parallel to the skyline, and rising instead  of sinking

“Supergirl,” says a voice behind Alex. She starts, and whirls around to see Hank speaking into his own headset. “Route the ship towards the coordinates I am transmitting to you. There is a landing strip there, and DEO agents will be waiting to lead you through the disembarking process.”

He mutes the headset after hearing Kara’s affirmative, and turns to address Alex. “It seems the Kryptonians will save the day, again.”

“Where were you?” Alex asks him. “You just disappeared.”

“Looking for a hero.” Hank replies, “You seem to have had it under control here.”

Before Alex can question him further, he walks away to speak with Vasquez about the landing procedures.

\---

**_xx_ **

“So.” Alex begins. “Supergirl. You’re really running with that now.”

They are in the DEO Med Bay, in a room that Alex had huddled Kara into almost as soon she had flown into the DEO headquarters.

“Well, the name was Miss Grant’s idea.” Kara replies, although she doesn’t seem to be thrilled about it. She reaches out her free hand and pokes at the analyzer that Alex is running over her torso.

“This is a barcode scanner.” she points out.

“It’s designed to _look_ like one, dummy.” Alex replies, swatting Kara’s hand away. “Think of it like a stethoscope that’s calibrated to Kryptonian bodies instead of human hearts.”

Kara makes a noise of surprise, which is the closest that Alex has ever seen to her being impressed by a piece of human technology. Other than the popcorn maker, that is.

She knows the tests by hand at this point - she had designed the procedures, after all - so she performs them mechanically as she surveys Kara.

In the Supergirl attire, her sister looks subtly different. The measured clumsiness that she cloaks herself with is gone, and the superhero who remains seems self-assured, ready to take the world on her shoulder. She seems half-god, which Alex knows is mostly just her own insecurities talking, and yet ...it’s hard to forget that Kara could level cities if she got it into her head to do so.

Which she never would, Alex reminds herself, and that thought makes her look towards the command room, where Astra is staring down Hank in the center of the control room. No bedrest for the general, it seems, not that Alex hadn’t tried.

“Alex?”

From Alex’s vantage point, it’s clear that Astra and Hank are arguing. It looks like they still haven’t come to an agreement about what to do permanently about the ship, and those onboard it. As of now, the ship itself is moored in the DEO facility in the desert, waiting on the President’s decision, but that hasn’t stopped Astra from dictating to Hank in detail about how the refugees on board should be treated, and exactly what should be done with them.

“Alex!” Kara exclaims, and Alex realizes that Kara has been calling her name for a while now.

“Yes!” she says, turning back to Kara and busying herself with the analyzer, but Kara’s eyes are still doing that squinty thing they do when she’s confused.

“What?” Alex asks, a little self-consciously.

Kara shrugs, and then her eyes are bearing into Alex’s with a familiar laser-like focus, which Alex now knows must be genetic.

“So this is what you do.” Kara says, waving an arm around half-heartedly at the activity all around them. “James Bond much?”

Alex thinks about it.

“More Mission Impossible with a bit of Independence Day thrown in.” she replies, and Kara smiles and shakes her head.

“I’m still mad at you.”

Alex nods. “I should have told you. You should’ve been in on this from the beginning.”

She doesn’t elaborate about the selfish part of her that had wanted to keep this part of her life secret, separate, her own. Ruminating on that would only make the _both_ of them feel guilty.

“I guess we both should have told each other some things a long time ago.” Kara admits sheepishly, and Alex wonders if Kara’s reasons for keeping Supergirl a secret had been similar to her own too, and if Kara too feels the unexpected relief and joy at being able to share this secret part of her life with her sister.

“I have something to show you.” she says, by way of a peace offering, thinking back to the simulation of Alura. “But it’ll need to wait a while, because it’s not fully done.”

Kara looks confused again, but nods.

Hank and Astra choose this moment to enter the room, striding side by side like enemy generals in a wary detente. Which, Alex supposes, they kind of are.

“You!” Kara says, staring at Hank, as Astra rushes to Kara’s side and takes her hand. “You were the one who came to find me.”

“Ms. Danvers.” Hank says curtly, inclining his hand. “Glad to see you’re healing. Feel free to stay the night.” He might as well have been telling Kara to get the hell out of there, for all the warmth and inflection in his tone.

Something strikes Alex, though, as she considers Kara’s words.

“But you were here.” she blurts out to Hank. “You were right next to me. How could you get to Catco in time?”

Hank turns to survey her, and then surprises Alex by smiling infinitesimally, and reaching out to pat her shoulder.

“Another day, Agent Danvers.” he says, and Alex swears that he winks before he walks away this time.

“That man is...” Astra begins, watching him exit, and then seems to stop herself. “Strange.” she finishes, but Alex gets the feeling that’s not what she had meant to say.

“Well, he did bring me a burger when he came to talk to me.” Kara says, in a tone implying that it rights all ills.

“Are you alright?” Astra asks her niece softly, and Kara practically glows at the question.

“I will be.” she says. “Alex checked me over.”

Alex looks away in embarrassment, surveying the work going on outside, when Astra turns to her with a face of transparent gratitude. It’s odd how openly emotional even the most reserved-seeming of Kryptonians can be.

She walks away to the farthest edge of the room, still staring outside, as the quiet conversation behind her continues.

“Thank you for your help.” Astra is telling Kara. “I could not have done it without you.”

 _“El-Mayarah.”_ Kara replies, and there is a broken sound from Astra. Of course. Kara had Clark, and Jeremiah, and Alex herself, but Alex wonders how many years it has been since Astra has heard the language of her people.

“I thought everyone was dead.” Kara whispers. “I thought you died.”

Astra’s reply is even softer. “Only a little, beloved one.”

“I have so many questions.”

“Another time.” Astra says. “You need rest now, and food. How do you feel about another one of those...burgers?”

“Yes!” Kara replies, glee in her voice, although Alex gets the feeling that she’s _letting_ herself be distracted. “Let’s go to the food truck by the park. They always give me extra fries.”

“To the extra fried truck it is.” Astra replies solemnly.

Alex turns around at the rustling of clothing behind her, but continues to linger at a distance as Kara pulls herself up, watched as intently by Astra as if she is afraid of Kara disappearing.

“I might need some help getting there, though.” Kara says sheepishly, holding her side, and Alex wonders if Kryptonians can get hernias.

Astra immediately reaches towards her niece, throwing an arm around Kara even though she is clearly favoring it, and preparing to flying off right then and there.

Alex clears her throat.

“I’m driving you.” she says, and when both Kryptonians turn to her with mouths open to argue, she adds, “ _Both_ of you. No more flying in your battered states.”

\---

**_xxi_ **

There are procedures to be followed, of course, and forms to be filled out, before they can even step foot outside the DEO doors. By the time the trip to the food truck is done, and Alex drives Astra home with Kara, it’s almost midnight. Kara does ask Alex to stay the night, but Alex figures that her and Astra need some time to themselves, and as Hank had threatened to lock her passcode out of the DEO’s security system if she put in any more overtime that week, she goes to her own apartment instead.

The bottle of whisky in her cabinet beckons to her almost as soon as she walks in through the door, and in her exhausted state, Alex feels ready to chug it straight from the bottle.

Instead, she takes out the additional paperwork that Pam from HR had sent home with her, spreads it all over the floor of her living room, and sets to filling it out.

Halfway through the ninth form (Illegal Use of Military Machine for Civilian Purposes, from when Kara had set a grilled cheese sandwich against at a DEO computer in order to heat it up, since she’d been asked not to use her heat vision near the machinery), Alex finds her mind wandering and returning to the events of the past few days.

Things have changed, she knows, and there seems to a be a sense of constant panic roiling deep inside her, because she has no idea how any of this is going to fall out. Astra isn’t dead, Kara seems to want to keep on being Supergirl, Hank isn’t who Alex had thought him to be, and the person whom Alex had thought she might have...something with is...is...

Alex gives a sigh of defeat and makes a beeline for the whiskey bottle, although she restrains herself enough to snag a glass along the way.

Glass in hand, bottle by her side, she settles back down, and and checks off the next box on the form with particular emphasis.

Astra had been clever. Using advanced technology as decoys - practically flaunting them, really - to hide the fact that she never really needed any of it. And of course, so many personnel in law enforcement - and even the DEO, Alex has to admit - had been too focused on tracking down the lines of supply for that technology, to entertain an alternative explanation. And Astra had kept them too busy to think, with her vendetta against pollution and oil spills and all those other things that had never really mattered much to Alex, or to National City, until a supervillain had begun calling attention to them.

Alex groans, downs another gulp, and thinks she should have known from that alone. Only a supervillain from _Kara’s_ family would be an eco-terrorist, anti-capitalist hippie.

She has just set a completed form aside, and is reaching for the next one, when the sound of the window latch opening catches her ears. Alex doesn’t bother reaching for her gun, but she _does_ try to nudge the half-empty bottle of whisky to her side, away from direct line of vision.

Not that it would matter, she reminds herself, as Astra stalks into view.

“I’m getting a vague sense of deja-vu from this.” Alex says in greeting. “Except that I remember this playing out the other way around last time.”

“Yes.” Astra nods. She kneels down to face Alex. “We’ve already established that you prefer it: being the comforter, the guardian, the protector.”

“‘S right in my name.” Alex mumbles, but doesn’t elaborate when Astra tilts her head quizzically at her.

Astra reaches towards the bottle of whisky, and Alex notes that her movements with her right arm are still laboured. “May I?”

Alex shrugs, and Astra brings the bottle towards herself. Instead of reaching for a glass, though, she merely replaces the cap on the bottle and then sets it aside, with an aura of finality about the gesture.

“I was drinking that.” Alex comments, but she doesn’t shift from her own position.

“I came here to talk to you.” Astra says. “I can’t risk you forgetting what I’m about to tell you.”

“Did you really threaten Cat Grant for naming you Superwoman?” Alex asks abruptly.

Astra looks bemused. “That is not what I was about to tell you.”

“Did you?” Alex presses. The question had only occurred to her just then, but it suddenly seems like the most important thing in the world to be answered.

“You are trying to distract me.” Astra says, and then, “I merely argued with Cat Grant that it would not do to name a supervillain after Metropolis’ hero, and that it would lend National City a attractive aura of mystery if I were not named at all. The fact that I argued this while holding a priceless painting from her office over the balcony should not signify.”

Alex lifts an eyebrow. No wonder the Queen Of All Media had retaliated with She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

“I am here, though, for something else.” Astra continues. “I came to thank you.”

“It was you who saved the day.” Alex says, “You and Ka-...Supergirl.”

Astra notices her pause, because of course she would.

“The name bothers you?” she ventures

“The _entire_ thing bothers me.” Alex mutters. “How can I keep her safe when she’s out there wanting to save the world?”

“She won’t be alone.” Astra says, and her tone is just noncommittal enough to make Alex wonder if Astra is talking about herself or the DEO.

“You guys did well out there today.” Alex says, instead of pressing the issue.

“It would not have been possible with your faith in me, Alex.” Astra says, with all seriousness. “You brought us together.”

Alex can’t control herself; she snorts, and takes another sip of the whisky to disguise it.

“You had faith in me.” Astra repeats, fiercely. “Kara has faith enough for the whole world, but _you_ had faith in _me_ , and I will not let you drink that memory away.”

Alex lowers the glass from her lips as if burned. There is silence as she stares at the ground, and Astra stares at her

“Maybe a hero is what this city needs.” Alex admits eventually. And maybe a city is what this particular hero needs, she thinks to herself, remembering how glowingly happy Kara-as-Supergirl had looked.

“It that what you really think?” Astra asks, and she’s watching Alex’s face carefully.

Alex nods.

“Just like it needed a villain to teach it how to protect the planet.”

It’s Astra who looks down this time, and the gesture is so reminiscent of Kara in her more melancholy moments, that Alex can’t help but think that she must be remembering Krypton.

“Kara needs you now.” she says, because she can’t bring a planet back for Astra, but maybe she can lead her to the part of it that remains. “And the DEO could always use your help.”

Astra inclines her head, but Alex can’t tell if it is in agreement or acknowledgment. “Your director and I still have many things to discuss.”

She is still being carefully noncommittal, it’s clear. And yet, she can’t have told Alex that for no reason.

“I’ll see you at the DEO on Monday?” Alex guesses.

“You will see me sooner than that.” Astra replies. “Tomorrow, in fact. Kara has invited me to what she calls ‘French Toast Sunday.’” Astra frowns. “Tell me, how is the toast in France different from American toast?”

Alex laughs, though she’s beginning to suspect Astra to be guilty of a slight degree of self-parody.

And yet, if Astra had intentionally mocked herself to make Alex laugh...Alex doesn’t know why that mere possibility warms her up in a way that the whisky had not been able to.

Astra stands up and looks expectantly at Alex. Alex set down the half-full glass, and moves it slightly away from herself. A small concession, but enough to win another slight, yet blinding, smile from Astra; Alex thinks that she might be the subject of some Pavlovian experiment.

Astra walks over to the window she had flown in through, and then hesitates just as she is about to climb out.

“I will see you, Alex.”

“See you.” Alex echoes, and then. “General.”

She watches the window as Astra leaps out and flies off, and knows that - regardless of her efforts - there are still some things that remain unsaid and undone between them; things that might have to remain unsaid and undone forever.

It is much later, however, as she’s climbing into bed, that Alex realizes one of those unsaid things; that Astra had faith in Alex too.

\---

**xxii**

Alex wakes up the next morning to the sound of One Direction blasting from her kitchen, and the whole thing is, once again, irritatingly familiar.

She grumbles and pulls on her shirt in a drowsy haze, and then pads over to the living room, blindly groping for anything she can use to smash the radio to bits, so that she never has to have “What Makes You Beautiful” assault her ears again.

“What have I _told_ you, Kara-” she begins, and then stops, first because the heavenly smell of fried eggs invades her nostrils, and then because the sight of _Astra_ in her kitchen, flipping toast with Kara, leaves Alex speechless in more ways than she’s willing to admit.

“What are you doing here?” Alex asks, for lack of anything better to say.

“If my sister won’t go to the French toast,” Kara declares, spatula raised dramatically into the air, “The French toast must go to my sister.”

Astra, on the other hand, merely points at the clock above the TV.

Alex looks, and draws in a deep breath. She must have been more exhausted, or more drunk, than she had thought. The clock says 11am, a full hour after she was supposed to have been at Kara’s.

“I-” Alex stammers, trying to come up with an explanation, but Kara’s attention is already back in the kitchen.

“Get me some plates, Alex.” She says, and peers into the pan, where the last of the toast is sizzling. “I think it’s done. It smells amazing.” She picks the toast out with her hands and flicks it in Astra’s direction.

“It looks disgusting.” Astra says, but she’s smiling and putting her hands up to the catch the toast as it flies towards her. She pops it into her mouth, and Kara’s resulting smile could light up a night sky all on its own.

Alex smiles at them both, as she takes out the plates and sets the table. Kara and Astra are still talking, code-switching animatedly between English and Kryptonian. Alex can feel affection bursting in her heart as she listens to them; affection for Kara, her sister from another world, and for Astra too, for making Kara smile like that.

She sets the last plate, for herself, down and then hesitates, looking towards the kitchen where the other two are still chatting, completely engrossed in each other. She should be surprised by how close they seem to have become already, but she isn’t, really. She wonders idly if this is what has always set Kryptonians apart in her mind. Not the cape, not the super strength, but the ability to love with an uncomplicated devotion that could save worlds, or destroy them. Had a human ever known love like that?

How could they?

She should call Hank, Alex decides suddenly. It’s her day off, technically, but maybe the DEO needs her to come in and help sort out the whole alien spaceship mess.

She’s almost out of the room before she hears Astra clear her throat. Alex turns around, and realizes that Kara and Astra are staring at her like she grew a new head.

“And where are you going?” Kara asks, hands on a hips in a pose that would have looked far more intimidating without the spatula she’s holding.

“Yes, you are surely not leaving us to suffer this vile concoction all by ourselves?” Astra asks, tilting her head towards the plate, and ignoring Kara’s scandalized glare at this insult towards her comfort food.

“I, uh-” Alex points weakly towards the bedroom, where her phone is lying by the bedside stand, and then looks at the two women staring expectantly at her. “Nevermind.”

She moves towards the table, towards Kara’s sunny smile and Astra’s slight one, and she knows that one human does, at least.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> Anyways, here it is, my first GD fic. Shoutout to the couple of anons who asked if I was ever gonna write anything for this pairing. See, I wasn't lying when I said I had something in the works ;)
> 
> Anyways, I'm on tumblr @alittlelesspain, so sauce me a prompt or feedback if you so wish :P


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